Recently, it has been widely used in the medical field to discriminate or judge the various agglutination patterns of blood cell particles, latex particles and carbon particles in order to detect and analyze various components or elements of blood (for example, blood type, various antibodies, various protein and the like) and virus.
The immunological agglutination detection apparatus for detecting such blood cell corpuscle agglutination or condensation patterns has been studied and developed in many fields and practiced in the products. For example, Japanese Utility Model publication No. 61-45479, Japanese Patent publication No. 61-8934, and Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 59-98708, respectively disclose some immunological agglutination detection apparatuses of such kind.
However, according to the immunological agglutination detection apparatus described in one of such conventional embodiments of Japanese Utility Model publication No. 61-45479, an image formed on the curved bottom face of a conical reaction vessel illuminated by a point light source is projected on a focus or image formation plane through a lens or an optical system. The conventional apparatus has a light receiving element placed at the image formation plane in order to receive an image scanned by a scanning mechanism and to convert the image to electrical signals progressively according to the intensity of light along the scanning direction. The light receiving element has an incident opening substantially identical to or smaller than the image of agglutination pattern formed at the center portion of the bottom face of the reaction vessel when it is non-agglutination, so that it is necessary to install a positioning mechanism for making the scanning light pass through the lowest portion (in which aggregations flock together) of the reaction vessel, resulting in a disadvantageously complicated structure. According to another shortcoming of the prior art, because the agglutination pattern obtained after being reacted changes according to the particular kind of the immunological agglutination of an examination item, it is necessary to adjust the open area, shape and the like of the slit or incident opening of the light receiving element. This is troublesome.
According to other embodiments or examples of such apparatuses described in Japanese Patent publication No. 61-8934 and Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 59-98709 above, a collimator lens as an illumination lens for making the light beams projected from a fixed point light source to parallel light flux is used, and the parallel light beam illuminates uniformly a microplate of the reaction vessel through a distribution plate (light diffusion plate) and the image on the conical bottom face of the reaction vessel is focussed on the light receiving face of the moving light receiving element. In consequence, it is necessary to determine at a light precision the relative position between the light source and the light receiving element. The conventional technology has such shortcomings as a low precision of the collimator lens and a too large structure of the illumination portion. In addition, the collimator lens is very expensive, resulting in a disadvantageously high price of the immunological agglutination detection apparatus.
It is a purpose of the device of this invention to provide an immunological agglutination detecting apparatus of small size and low cost without the shortcomings of the conventional technology or any deterioration in the result of examination.
According to the present device, it has an agglutination examination plate unit comprising a number of reaction vessels each having a slanted face of at least a part of the bottom face of the reaction vessel, the reaction vessels are arranged in the manner of a matrix (i.e. a grid) and formed on a base plate, a light source is placed at one side of the agglutination examination plate unit for projection therethrough, and a light receiving portion is situated at another side of the unit. Respective images of the agglutination patterns formed on the bottom faces of the plurality of the reaction vessels due to illuminous light outputted from the luminesce or light emitting portion are focussed on the light receiving face of the light receiving elements constituting the light receiving portion by means of lens, and as a result an output signal is adapted to detect the agglutination patterns. In addition, the light emitting portion above is constructed by at least one point light source associated with each respective reaction vessel of the plurality of reaction vessels in any column or file or a transverse row, which point light source is opposed to a respective reaction vessel. According to the construction of the light emitting portion, subsidiary point light sources are arranged at both ends of the row of these primary light sources.
The embodiment uses an ABO type judge or examination method of human blood, as an example, with respect to an immunological agglutination. In general, when the human being are classified by the blood group of ABO type, it is possible to divide it to four groups of A, B, AB, and O types.
In order to judge or decide respective blood groups in the blood type judge examination, it is general first to centrifugally separate the blood collected from a subject into red blood corpuscles and blood sera and then the blood type judgement is carried out. When respective red blood corpuscles and sera of four blood groups above are blended, respective corpuscles and sera are partly adhered to each other. The phenomenon of adhesion or agglutination above is shown in the following table.
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ Agglutination due to red blood corpuscles and blood sera Red blood corpuscles Blood type O A B AB ______________________________________ Blood sera O X .largecircle. .largecircle. .largecircle. A X X .largecircle. .largecircle. B X .largecircle. X .largecircle. AB X X X X ______________________________________
In the above table, X shows non-agglutination and O shows agglutination which are occurred in the examination.
As apparent from the table above, the character of O type red blood corpuscles are differed from that of A, B, and AB types red blood corpuscles, and AB type red blood corpuscles have the characters of respective A and B types red blood corpuscles additionally.
According to the embodiment, two sample liquids are prepared by pouring dilution solutions into respective red blood corpuscles of each blood group and then anti A blood sera (B type blood sera) and anti B blood sera (A type blood sera) of examination agents are dropped into respective sample liquids in order to judge the blood type of the subject.
In this case, the blood type of the subject was A group and anti A blood sera was added to the blood, so as to carry out agglutination, and no condensation occurred. When the blood of the subject is not agglutinated by using anti A blood sera and agglutinated by anti B blood sera, it is B type. In case that it is agglutinated by using anti A blood sera and anti B blood sera, the blood type of the subject is of AB type. When it is not agglutinated by using both anti A and anti B blood sera, it is decided that it is of O type.